15 Minute Asian Light Meals

***UPDATE!

8/8 This morning I woke up and Scott surprised me by telling me, “pack 3 days of clothing, we’re going on a surprise trip!” Soooo coooool! We’re just about to leave but I wanted to tell you that I’ll spin the random number generator wheel as soon as I have a moment with Internet access after 3pm.

Dish has to be ready in 15 minutes or less. Bittman’s 10 minutes just seems really short and as a mother of 2, I get distracted by a kid once every 5 minutes anyways.

Submit a simple, light, quick meal OR a dish that goes with rice.¬† You don’t have to count rice steaming time. Most Asian meals are accompanied by rice and rice takes about 20-30 minutes to make. So don’t worry about the rice time. Just type in “Serve with rice” in your recipe

Write the recipe Bittmann style – like this

Steamed Mussels Put three pounds of washed mussels in a pot with 2 tablespoons of Thai curry paste, 2 cups of coconut milk, garlic cloves, Thai basil leaves and chopped tomatoes. Steam until mussels open. Serve with bread or rice. The simpler and more elegant the recipe is, the better. You can link to a recipe, but please at least describe what you’re linking to. Name your recipe too!

Submit by my birthday, August 8th 3pm EST. Contest open to anyone in the world. I’ll be using the handy Random Number Generator to pick a winner. YOU CAN ENTER ONCE A DAY!!! Come back everyday and submit a new 15 minute recipe if you’d like.

BONUS! If you blog or Twitter about this contest, you can have an extra entry. Just come back and link to what you’ve posted or just write that you Twitter’d about it

Will you please enter??

Comments 141

Place 24 jumbo shrimp in a shallow dish. Dress seafood with lime juice and zest, a generous drizzle of sesame oil, grill seasoning and hot pepper flakes. Wrap each shrimp with a half slice of bacon. Arrange the shrimp on a slotted baking panto allow draining while bacon crisps. Bake shrimp in 425 degree oven 10 minutes until pink and curled and bacon is crisp.

All you need is some fish fillets – Prompret or tilapia. Sometimes I use a whole fish mid-size. Wash and put fish on plate ready for steaming. Just put Black Bean Sauce (available in regular stores or Chinese Grocery stores) and some scallions on fish. Steam for 10-15 minutes. It will be ready to eat. What I do is that I put to steam on my rice cooker (especially if you have steamer on top of rice cooker even better). Just leave it and it will be ready when rice is ready.

Recipe – Fried Egg with Preserved Turnips
You can get these chopped preserved turnips in any Chinese Grocery stores.
Put some olive oil on pan, stir fry some chopped garlic and the chopped perserved turnip and then add 2 eggs (beaten). Flip and cook both side of eggs. Ready to serve. An Asian twist to egg omelet.

This is so much fun. You’ve gotten me to think about quick and easy Asian dishes all this week. Here’s another one that I thought of that is fast if you already have boiled eggs on hand. I do it two ways–the non-fussy way is to not bother to fry the boiled eggs. If you have time and want to do it the fussy traditional way, then it involved frying the boiled eggs. My Thai friend taught me this dish.

In a small pot, add a couple tbsps of oil, then add one yellow onion, sliced thin. Cook over med heat till onions are wilted and starting to caramelize just a little. Add 1/3 cup of tamarind juice and 3 tbsp sugar (more to taste if it’s too sour). Bring to boil and add 6-8 boiled eggs. Coat eggs with tamarind sauce and dish out. If you want it to be spicy, add a couple of diced Thai bird chillies to the sauce. Serve over rice.

Fry bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until crispy. Remove bacon and drain the fat, reserving one tablespoon of the grease in the skillet. Add the olive oil, onion, red pepper flakes and garlic. Cook and stir over medium heat until the onions are starting to be tender.
Add the bok choy, and place a lid on the pan. Let cook for 3 to 5 minutes. Remove the lid; cook and stir until the bok choy is tender but still crunchy, about 2 minutes. Stir in the bacon, and season with salt. Serve piping hot and with rice:)

For 2 to 4 pax. This can be made in 15 minutes or less. Just put a pot of water for boiling, and while its boiling, cut up vegetables like carrots(1), chinese long cabbage(3 leaves), sausages (4), taufu pok (8 to 10), mushrooms (canned button would do) – by this time, the water would be boiling already, just put all the cut ingredients inside and let it boil for abt 2 minutes, and then add in the Maggi Mee (3 pkt) and the powdered spice, and let it cook for abt another 2 minutes. Lastly, throw in some bean sprouts and 2 eggs. Voila! Done!

Yeah, I’m back again! I’m determined to enter as many times as allowed by gosh;) I WANT that prize!!

Lebanese Garlic Sauce

This is a garlic powered lemony dressing. Serve with meats, as a seasoning in salad dressings or on pocket bread sandwiches or tear off pieces of pita bread and dip in it. If sauce separates while in storage, just stir or blend again.

In the container of a blender, combine the 4 bulbs garlic, cloves separated and peeled, 1 cup lemon juice and 1 teaspoon salt. Blend at medium speed until smooth. Continue blending while pouring 3 cups olive oil into the blender in a thin stream. The mixture should become thick and white like salad dressing. Store refrigerated in a glass container.

1) Boil the calamari in water until softened.
2) Thinly slice the onion, scallions, red bell pepper, green pepper, carrot.
3) Boil the fettucine noodles
4) In a heated wok, combine all the sauce ingredients with about 1/4 cup of hot water from the calamari.
5) Mix sauce ingredients well until everything is blended.
6) Toss in calamari after straining
7) Toss in fettucine noodles after straining
8) Mix well

steamed egg custard: in a medium bowl, whisk together 2 large eggs, 1 cup of chicken broth (or 1 cup of water + 2 T soy sauce), a drizzle of sesame oil, black pepper, and some chopped scallions. steam on low heat for 12-15 minutes, until the custard is set.

I just cooked this yummy dish:
Mild Lentil & Veggie Curry
Soak one-and-a-half cups of orange-coloured lentils in water. Slice up a medium purple onion and leek. Stirfry onion in a teaspoon of oil till tender. Add the leek (and other veggies if you like such as chopped fresh chilli and zucchini). Add half a tsp each of powdered cumin, turmeric, coriander and curry. Pop in a stick of cinnamon, a few blooms of staranise, several fenugreek seeds, 3 cloves, 2 tsp dried (or fresh chopped) curry leaves – if you have them. Add the lentils and 2 cups of veggie (or chicken) stock. Boil for 9 minutes. Adjust taste with chilli powder, salt and pepper. Eat as it is or with boiled rice and/or panfried meats. Serves 2-4.

Pound out some chicken breasts between two sheets of plastic wrap to make thin cutlets. Basically you want to even out the thickness of the cutlet, how thick or how thin you make them is up to you. Season cutlets with a little salt. Set out three shallow bowls on the counter. In first bowl, whisk up one or two eggs and a small amount or water. Add AP flour to the second bowl and panko bread crumbs to the third bowl. Dip your cutlets into the egg, dredge in flour, dip into the egg again and then finally dredge in the panko. Heat up some oil in a large skillet. You want oil to be about 1/2 inch deep. Fry the cutlets on medium to medium-high heat until the panko coating is golden brown and cutlet is cooked through. Cooking time will vary depending on the thickness of your cutlets. Serve with hot rice and tonkatsu sauce, Bulldog brand if you can find it. Green beans would be a perfect vegetable to serve with this.

(except for the Bulldog sauce, this isn’t uniquely Asian, but it is quick and easy and darn it, I want that camera!)

Heat wok or skillet, add 3 Tablespoons peanut oil and heat until very hot. Stirfry ginger, garlic pork and scallions for 1 minute. Pour in 1 tablespoon of sherry, mixing rapidly. Add the bean sprouts while you toss. Pour in the soy-sauce mixture while stirring. Add the noodles, stirfry for three minutes, until mixture is evenly coated with sauce. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup chopped cilantro.

Re-hydrate the rice papers with cold water about 5-7 seconds (yes, seconds), put the vegetable in middle and wrap. You can work in batched if making for a crowd by dipping individually several rice paper and setting them on a flat surface. So, when you finish the last one, the first will be ready for filling and wrapping.

Refrigerate a piece of organic Japanese tofu. Dilute 1 tsp of soba/tempura sauce with water to suit your taste & pour mixture over the tofu. Top the tofu with bonito flakes and chopped spring onions. Ta-Da!! =x

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Happy Birthday Jaden (I’m a few hours early) … your birthday is such an auspicious date, and coincides with the Beijing Olympics opening too! Hope u have a wonderful celebration and a super year ahead (plus big sales for your cookbook *ka ching!*)

Get a pot of water to boil. Add in the spaghetti and some shitake mushrooms (chopped). While it’s boiling, cut fine 4 bulbs of garlic, slice sausages (4), chop some herbs (any herb would do), and have half a packet of frozen mix vege at hand. Also, just mix 3 eggs, 2 cups of low fat milk, with 1 cup of cheese (any), and lots of black pepper in a bowl. In a wok, heat up some oil, fry the garlic till fragrant, throw in everything except the egg mixture. Let it cook for abt 5 minutes. Drain the spaghetti & mushrooms – mix it into the wok. Stir with a wooden spoon. And then off the fire, and pour in the egg mixture. Add salt to taste. Voila! Done!

Chop up some celery, carrot, baby corn, yellow capsicum and enoki mushrooms. In a wok, fry some chopped garlic in some oil until fragrant. Chuck in all the vegetables and stir quickly. Add in a couple of dashes of oyster sauce to taste and sprinkle a wee bit of water in the wok. Keep stirring until water dries up. Dish up and serve hot with rice.

Happy Birthday Jaden! May you have a long and prosperous life! Here is my birthday recipe for you

Steamed Shiitake Mushrooms with Bok Choy and Fatt Choy
Soak a small handful of fatt choy in boiling water with a drop of sesame oil and a pinch of salt. Drain and set aside. Marinate 10 fresh shiitake mushrooms in salt, soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar and sesame oil. Steam the shiitakes for 15 minutes. Cut 6-8 baby bok choy in half, lengthwise, and steam for 8 minutes. Boil a sauce made from salt, Shaoxing wine, sugar, sesame oil, and white pepper, then thicken with a cornstarch slurry. Arrange the bok choy in a circle with the tops pointing inward on a plate. Pile the shiitakes in the center. Garnish with the fatt choy. Drizzle the sauce all over the vegetables.

big happy, happy birthday, gorgeous! guess what? today’s the first day (and started at 11am) of the 10-day weinfest in town and we are sure to celebrate your big day with bottles of sekt! (german sparkling wine)

First of all HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JADEN!!! Road trip….ENJOY! Now for the recipe…
Take about a pound of leftover beef and cut into thin strips. Toss with a little dry sherry, salt and pepper (to taste),about 3 tablespoons oyster sauce, a clove of minced fresh garlic, a pinch of brown sugar and one tablespoon 5 spice. Mix with leftover noodles (or any leftover pasta) Heat in microwave until warm and comforting. Drizzle with sesame oil. If you have any small amounts of salad ingredients toss that in too. Serves 1 to 4. Viola!!

Cook up some rice the day before and chill it. In a wok scramble some eggs and set aside. Wipe out the wok and put in some oil, then rice, grated carrots,chopped scallions, eggs, cooked chopped pork or chicken, salt, pepper and soy sauce to taste. Stir all around until heated. I make fried rice for my Foods I students. Usually I make enough for 75 students in one day, and they enjoy it.

Happy Birthday! (It was the 5th anniversary of my 29th birthday and I’m still celebrating.) The recipe I’m passing along has been a family favorite for years and is insanely simple.

In an unheated heavy bottomed skillet with 1/3 cup of good olive oil, place 1 1/2 lbs of boneless salmon fillets skin side up. In a measuring cup, mix 1/4 cup light soy sauce, 1/4 cup sake and 1 bunch of scallions that have been washed, trimmed and sliced finely. Flip the fillets skin side down to coat with oil and evenly sprinkle 3 cloves of minced garlic on top. Grate a 2 inch piece of ginger over the fish and top with half of the soy sauce mixture. Cook over medium to medium high heat, tightly covered, for about five minutes or until salmon is opaque most of the way up the sides with plenty of pink in the center. Flip fillets, remove skin, add the rest of the soy sauce mixture and continue cooking until fish is opaque the rest of the way through.

Serve pieces of the fish and the pan liquids over steamed rice or hot linguine.

Coat pan with a few tablespoons of oil. Add garlic and chicken and stir fry until done one the outside. Add bok choy and continue to stir fry for 3 minutes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and cover pan with a lid. Allow to cook for 5 minutes. When the bok choy is bright green and cooked to your liking, add fish sauce and stock and cook for 1 more minute. Serve with rice and enjoy.

Your recipe was featured in Parents/Feb 2010. We, my 7 year old & I, made a version of it last night. The response? From both my 7 year old & my 9 year old, “Can we have this for dinner every night?” Loved it!